Need info. Re. White House control of images from Iraq.

[Laelth]

Just last night I got into a discussion with a very nice guy who was connecting a new computer to a network LAN he had originally installed in my office. He's a Republican who follows politics. He's aware of a lot that's going on, even if he's unaware of why things are happening and who's benefiting from what's happening (i.e. the rich). He wanted to blame the media for various distortions that make intelligent voting nearly impossible for the average American. I had to agree with him about the media, but we disagreed on exactly how the truth was being distorted and who was benefiting from those distortions. He particularly complained about all the negative coverage of the Iraq War, and at that point I pulled an obscure factoid from my head that I couldn't source. I need your help to source this fact (if it is a fact).

I read or heard somewhere that early on in the Iraq War, the media were far more inclined to show progress that was being made in the reconstruction of Iraq. I remember seeing images of students in a newly-built school, for example. As it turned out, insurgents (or rebels) in Iraq saw the coverage too, and made it a point to blow up whatever it was that appeared on the news in the US that might show progress. The Bush administration quickly learned that they couldn't allow these kinds of propaganda stories to air on TV in the US because doing so only lead to the destruction of whatever it was that we had just built. Thus, positive coverage of actual improvements in Iraq were no longer shown on TV. I argued to my computer expert that it wasn't the media's fault that we were only shown the bad things happening in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration, through the FCC, I argued, that prohibited coverage of this so-called progress.

He didn't buy it, and I can't remember from where I gleaned this factoid. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or, have you seen something similar? Or did the US media self-censor these items to protect the innocent in Iraq?

Any help would be most appreciated.

-Laelth

[Laelth]

1. Gee ... looks like I must have dreamed this up.

:shrug:

n/t

-Laelth